The primary energy that goes into electricity generation is 39.49 quadrillion BTUs (usually shortened to quads). One addition to the LLNL diagram that’s really nice is the grey lines that show “ rejected energy.” Do you see where the thickest grey line is? Right after the yellow box called “Electricity Generation.” US energy flows for the year 2010Īs Kai Ryssdal of NPR’s business program, Marketplace, likes to say, let’s do the numbers. Those diagrams show the inputs and outputs, so you can see the big picture of energy supply and consumption easily. (Click the diagram to see a larger image.) A while back I wrote about US energy flows and showed similar diagrams (called Sankey diagrams) from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). It’s from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and shows the energy flows in the US for the year 2010. After converting the fuel, we then send the electricity through miles and miles of wires, where it loses more of the energy that was originally in the fuel (called source energy or primary energy). That process results in a lot of waste heat. The reason is simple: Most of our electricity comes from the burning of fuels like coal and natural gas. When does saving one of anything ever result in actually saving three or four? When we’re talking about electricity, of course.
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